Liquid crystal displays (LCD) are increasing in popularity as they are integrated into more consumer products. The need exists to develop display technologies which are capable of displaying more information. Likewise, the need exists to develop the processing technologies to enable the efficient manufacture of such devices. Typical liquid crystal display construction uses two substrates with patterned electrodes separated by a gap of 5 to 10 microns into which the liquid crystal fluid is injected. In order to display more information, the LCD should have the thinnest possible gap. For example, fast switching super twisted nematic (STN) displays use 4 micron cell gaps and ferroelectric displays use a gap of less than 1 micron. When the voltage is applied across these small gaps, the electric field can be very large, causing an electric short if any foreign material such as dust is present in the gap. Additionally, this phenomena is also seen in devices such as cholesteric displays where much higher voltages of up to 50 volts may be placed across the electrodes. The LCD industry currently solves this problem by using inorganic coatings on top of the electrodes to act as an insulation layer between the plates. The coating is usually applied using offset printing techniques and then fired to cure it. Additionally it is also common to completely coat the substrate, cure the coating to harden it, and then etch the hardened coating in hydrofluoric acid through a patterned photoresist mask. While these methods produce patterned coatings, they require expensive hard tooling (printheads) and the use of corrosive chemicals (hydrofluoric acid) which can damage glass substrates. Obviously, it would be advantageous to have a method of providing an insulation layer over the electrode that does not require expensive tooling and does not harm the glass substrate.